this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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Considering replacing end-of-life Synology boxes (alien.top)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Hey folks.

I am currently using Backblaze for cloud backup, but I like also to have a local solution, for redundancy, for backup of devices where it's not really worth paying the Backblaze subscription, and other reasons.

I have a Synology DS210 (bought June 2010) and DS411 (October 2011). These replaced PCs where the PC had been retired for performance reasons. I put new drives in, installed Ubuntu, and set them up as SMB shares.

The drives in the Synology boxes have been good as gold, but the ones in the DS210 are starting to report some bad sectors. It's making me think I should replace the drives, but I'm also wondering whether it's worth replacing the Synology boxes themselves. And if so, with what?

I'm storing approx 10TB data across the two devices.

I have a very old first-gen Intel i7 board inside of an Antec tower, which I could bring back online with some drives and a new PSU, so that would just need new drives fitting. It is a full tower case though, so wouldn't fit alongside the rest of my kit.

What would you do? Is there any point in ditching the Synology boxes, given they're working fine? I could consolidate the two Synology boxes into one, fitting 4x 8TB drives (not sure about whether a DS411j can cope with 8TB disks though?

Am I right in thinking that turning my i7 board into a server would be a much more power-hungry option than the Synology?

If you would ditch the Synology and ignore the i7 board, what would you buy?

​

TIA for any thoughts you care to jot down.

​

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Maybe try to boot Unraid or OMV via USB. Then the software is still patched.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Depends what your after ... I used to roll my own storage servers, but had a constant fight with either something going or performance issues - I then purchased a NAS as an experiment, and never looked back.

Personally, I say look at what else is out there, you have a couple of other vendors on the market, including ASUSTOR and TerraMaster.. from experience, If you want cheap, an efficient.. look at the ARM-based models, but they'd still run rings around something 12-13 years old.

I'd say steer clear of QNAP, they've been having a bad few years with regards to vulnerabilities, the other issue this causes is almost weekly critical firmware updates, which requires a reboot (not an issue for many.. but intolerable when it's providing NFS for my ESXi and K8S hosts).

On the i7, you could give TrueNAS a try.. but I'd suggest you wouldn't want to run that long term, as it wont be anywhere near as powerful or efficient as the latest 2-3 generations.. even an entry level i3 N305 has 8 cores these days - and it'd be a PITA to get it setup, only to discover you need to replace it in 6-12 months...

Which ever way you go, see this as an investment... which I suspect, you already treat it as, especially since you've done so well from your old machines (call me impressed)